Measuring Distraction

I knew I would write this post right after I scanned this piece of paper. And yet, what did I do? I opened an email which led me to open another link before I reminded myself that since I had scanned the format, I should write this post.

If your mobile phone and laptop suck up your time and leave you tired without any feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day, you might just want to do this exercise for a few days and measure your DISTRACTION QUOTIENT.

If you look at the sheet, you'll see 4 columns. You'll also see some symbols and words highlighted in green.

The first 2 columns are sort of 'purposeful'. Obviously, we use mobile phones and laptops for purposeful activities. So the first 2 columns give you the space to record what you consciously decide to do using these gadgets. They are marked with 'right tick' on top. You can fill these columns well in advance.

The 3rd and 4th columns are meant to record the instances of 'unintentional' or 'undetermined' use of these gadgets. The kind of thing I did (narrated right at the start of this post) before I started writing this post. You would fill these columns only after you've distracted yourself and done something which wasn't quite consciously determined in advance.

The ratio of the number of items in the first two and the number of items in the last two should give your DISTRACTION QUOTIENT. I hope you would know how to interpret that ratio :).

The stomach of our eyes and the legs of our fingers

As an incredible and incredibly tired - to the point of puking coz - user of the smart phone and laptop screens, I have often wondered about the role of tablet and phablet (that's such a fuck-all category name, the sound of it, the meaning of it) and the distinctions between the the latter two, and the distinctions between the latter two and the smart phone especially. Without any more long sentences, here are a few thoughts.

I can see two broad categories: consumption devices and production devices.

Mobile phones? Consumption devices in 'sachet' form, literally and also for different purposes. Suited for small tasks, small talking, small give and take of messages, small viewing. (Exceptions galore. Sickening ones largely I guess. Am not a gamer, but have watched users pore into their little screens playing obnoxious games for good stretches. I find reading a decent length article on a mobile mighty difficult for my eyes.)

Laptops, PCs? Production-cum-consumption devices. When we want to do graphics, write articles, some thoughtful long posts, read at length, browse a little long for comparing and shopping things, watching decent length videos or movies and such...

Tapping on touch-screens is not the same as tapping physical keys. Imagine, if we were to lay down the keys of a piano in a touch-screen form or the strings of a guitar in a touch-screen form. How easy or how difficult? Some folks have attempted such innovations. I wonder if they are any convenient.

And a weird statement is, small screen is not the same as big screen. Eyes want certain width of landscape viewing at least to feel comfortable for long stretches of reading, viewing, coding and so on.

Tablets/Phablets take care of the viewing bit, but don't make finger-tapping any easy. The brief periods when I've had a chance to use a Tablet didn't leave me feeling any great.

Meanings of sharing 'family and children' pics on FB

I wonder when Facebook was originally built it carried the tag 'social media'. But since it was meant to become a virtual hangout for friends, typically from a college, it isn't a surprise that it assumed the tag so easily.

Given the current situation, the meaning of 'social' can be talked about until...

Given that the connections to most 'friends' on FB now are at best tenuous, I am trying to make sense of the sharing-family-and-children-pics-(with all the friends)-on-Facebook phenomenon.

1. Sharers know that friends might want to know what's happening in the family. Though these sharers don't know who these friends are exactly. So anyway, the pics should reach these not-exactly-known friends who might want to know.
2. Sharers know who these friends are exactly but don't find any other channel suitable enough to do such sharing. 'Suitable' means convenient or sophisticated or common channel used by all friends.
3. If in point#2, I pick the aspect of convenience, I can conjecture that sharers find it inconvenient to build a channel where they can do the sharing with just those friends with whom they want to share.
4. Sharers find it a matter of pride to show off their 'families', whatever the context.
5. Sharers are not exactly content sharing their moments and space with those they find themselves with. They want the moments and the space of togetherness to spread among other friends too. And who these other friends are, they might or might not know exactly.

It isn't very tough to reproduce. And it isn't tough either to take smiling pics every now and then. And it isn't very tough not to know exactly with whom to share smiling pics of those that we reproduce.

What's tough often doesn't get addressed, nor shared.

Made in School and Sucks

After birth, how much time does a child spend with parents?

If asked, parents would prefer the child to stay at school for as long as possible. Why? Coz they believe that their child learns and grows in school.

If we look at the quality of adult individuals, I would have doubts about learning and growing in school.

Actually after school, parents send their kids to tuition classes and other classes. There are tuition classes all around our store. I observe kids vigorously copying their homework received at tuition classes right before they enter these classes.

Do we then understand that typically parents are incapable of instructing and teaching their child? And therefore, they banish the child from their sights for a really long time of the day? Or do we understand that parents are unwilling to take responsibility of building their child into a great individual?

Or all my questions are ridiculous. Things are just fine.

-18

That's the score at which, I was informed at an institute I recently visited, a student was (or had to be) admitted to the MBA program.

1. MBA is no longer a serious program.
2. Supply of MBA institutes far exceed the demand.
3. Students are getting dumber.
4. Institute is under pressure for monetary reasons to admit such students.
5. MBA, the tag, has become more important than actual merit.
6. MBA has become a short-cut to everything.

I still haven't gotten down to listing the more serious inferences. Make your inferences.

Elevating to the gym and driving to the divine

Right opposite our society-complex, there's a walled piece of land. In one corner near the entrance to this land there's a family residing with a few cows.

When I go for my run, every time I see quite a few people come to this place. They buy green shoots and feed these cows. I reckon most of these guys have astrological or religious reasons to do this. May be, doing so leads to some or the other believed benefit.

As with all situations and occasions, peculiar folks do turn up. Some come driving in their cars but don't bother to step out. As soon as the green-shoots-seller sees them he picks up a bunch and walks up to these cars. The car-dwellers touch the bunch and this guy feeds the shoots to the cows.

My shop is in a complex which houses a physiotherapy center on the 3rd floor and a gym on the 4th floor. I open my shop when it's typically women's time (that is, latter part of the morning) at these places. And I see all women take the elevator to the gym.

Does it require education to make the carzy folks see that walking down to the cow-shed might benefit them immensely? Or climbing up the stairs might be a good warm-up exercise instead of an inconvenience?

Return on Formal Education (RFE)

Sharing some stats from this article I read two days back:

• India now produces more engineers and MBAs than the US and China combined. Our annual output of 15 lakh engineers and 3 lakh MBAs is way ahead of the US (1 lakh engineers and 1.25 lakh MBAs) and China (11 lakh engineers and 75,000 MBAs).
• MBAuniverse.com estimates that outside the top 20 MBA colleges only 24% of students are employable.
• Assocham believes that campus placement (in the context of engineering) outside the top 20 colleges is 10%.

The article also has some suggestions which is where it gets really funny. By funny, I mean the quality of suggestions, not really the stats. Stats aren't surprising at all. Have a look:

• They must get 3-5 years of work experience after their engineering or college degree before getting an MBA.
• If most students are not getting campus placements we need to fix our dysfunctional employment exchanges that only gave 3 lakh jobs last year to the 4 crore kids registered. We need to allow foreign universities in.
• We need to raise our 3 lakh formal apprenticeships — Germany has 40 lakh, Japan 1 crore and China has 1.5 crore.
• Most importantly, India must explode job creation because nothing changes a student's life more than their first formal, non-farm job. 

A critique of the article:
While every action or piece of execution benefits from good measurement systems and the stats emerging out of these measurement systems, the recommendations offered in this article reek of naivete at best. Even offering only the stats would've done better justice to the gravity of the situation.

Find the article here. 

Verbal Confusion

A friend, Subur Khan, expresses on FB:

Why the hell everyone is so politically judgmental these days... If you oppose Modi... Then you are pro congress... If you raise your voice against injustice you become traitor... Nobody ask what Big B/Ajay Devgan/Akhshay Kumar have done for Uttarakhand's victims whereas SRK/Aamir/Salman are being questioned... Suddenly FB has become more communal then that of 'rest of India'

In my response, I didn't touch upon the communal aspect because I reckon that's an off-shoot of what I call the Godly Confusion, that is Verbal Confusion. Here's my response:

Really, is that happening on your timeline!? Ha ha ha ha bollywood finds itself under fire every time something serious happens.

Part of the reason is people think they are heroes. And heroes are always meant to give others a good time, whether the times are good or bad. That's how people view it.

But bollywood is an acting industry not a heroism industry. And heroes are actors, not necessarily heroes. This verbal confusion is the source of income and is the source of pressure.

And this brings to light the deficiency in verbal education in this country. There are english speaking institutes whose mandate was just this. But then the way it happened, english speaking doesn't quite mean speaking english meaningfully. So again a verbal confusion.

All schools I guess were also meant to impart a sense of understanding meanings but since that takes effort and time, they just dropped it out of their list of objectives. Now it seems as if meaning making doesn't exist.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Don't mind. This is early morning verbal energy.

RIP Umesh Shinde

A friend, Harish Jain, expressed this on FB:

It hurts to wake up and read a news that says a newly wed guy died because of pothole on the road. Life has really gone cheaper than the cost of filling these holes. BMC - Please make a list of all the holes and put a price for filling each one of them. I can assure you that people will come out and pay you for that also other than the taxes. RIP Umesh Shinde.

And I had this to say:

I have been riding slowly. I have been driving slowly. For the co-traveller, typically it's boring but then I start showing my slow-motion pothole dodging skills and it all becomes thoroughly entertaining. And I feel so elegant to myself. 

My description is absurd but it's the truth, at least in my context. But when incidents like these happen, I wonder how absurd it would be to rise in unison against a pothole-indifferent government.